Breathe Easy
by JanieNine
Summary: Ron and Hermione have a new child, with physical disabilities. Hermione is shocked, Ron has absolutely no idea what to do, and St. Mungo's is flabbergasted. H&G, R&Hr, possibly Rose&Scorpius later in the story.


A/N: Hello all! After debating whether I should write this story or not, I decided that I would always be asking myself "what if" if I chose to keep it to myself. I only have a couple ideas for this story (it was originally a one-shot in my head), so bear with me as I try to help this thing evolve. I will, however, make a few promises to you guys. My stories are not abandoned. At the very least, I will leave them 2 years until I graduate from high school if things become that stressful for me. I promise to at least THINK of my stories once a week, if I don't write something down. I also promise to only upload writing of at least passable quality. Mind you, my version of passable entails no grammatical errors and realistic dialogue. If there's a typo, that's still considered passable for me. If you find typos, PLEASE TELL ME. I would hate for the world to see that I think she is spelled with a t or something. I have a problem with writing the when I should write she. Apparently it's a common problem among writers, as one of my favorite writers on this site makes that mistake quite often. I also promise to take ALL suggestions into consideration. I will personally reply to every review with a PM, and I thank my followers and favorites. (I actually have a special folder where I save those email notifications because I feel so flattered. It's a problem.) I think that's it for disclaimers and promises that I fully intend to keep.

Thanks for reading and enjoy!

~Janie

* * *

At least a fifteen minute walk from the nearest village, a white brick house with a maroon roof stood in a clearing of the woods that filled the region. Honeysuckle leaves rustled in the light breeze as it blew against the house's front corner near the vegetable garden. Manicured rosebushes sat in a perfect line beneath the windows, whose boxes overflowed with marigold flowers. The water of a duck pond in the back stood tranquil; the birds moved south a couple weeks ago in anticipation for winter. The air still felt warm for October, but the birds sensed something the humans could not and left. The only sign that the house could be even a little out of the ordinary were six large hoops in the backyard field. Three stood on one side of the field in a row, mirroring the other three across them. Long wooden benches framed the field, and a shed off to the side had a fairly serious lock that belied more important possessions than ordinary brooms and the occasional shovel. The large, black cauldron sitting next to the barbeque grill may have been another indication.

Inside, the sitting room contained an eclectic mix of upholsteries. A rich oriental rug adorned the floor. In the corner, a baby grand piano played Brahms music to no one in particular the keys seemed to gravitate downwards in a succession of perfectly executed chords. The instrument played itself as if having a person play were absurd. A couch, covered in rich burgundy fabric, sat in front of the coffee table at the other side. At the back of the room, two wingback chairs faced both each other and the large stone fireplace at the front. A couple pokers leaned against the stone, waiting to spike the hearth back to life. They were rarely needed, however. The fire was used often enough to keep from completely dying.

As they did many times each day, the embers flared to life of their own accord as a face forced its way into the fireplace. "Ron? Hermione?" a voice shouted from the coals.

On the upper story of the house, the floor suddenly rose to the temperature of especially warm shower water under the feet of both Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. "Someone's fire calling, Ron. Can you get it for me?" Hermione yelled from the bathroom.

"Sure, 'Mione." She heard his feet thud eighteen times down the stairs as he walked to the sitting room. "It's Harry!" he yelled up a few seconds later, "No need to come down. He wants to talk to me anyway." Ron couldn't quite catch her response because of the distance, but he figured it was something telling him to get on with the conversation.

"What's up, Harry?" Ron said, grinning.

"Wait, how did you know I was calling if you were both out of the room?"

"Hermione created a charm that warms the floor under our feet whenever someone calls the house. It was hard to figure out the exact temperature though. Bloody woman nearly burnt my feet off the first time she placed the charm. It's really cool though. Feels the same whether I'm wearing shoes or not. I have no idea how she got it to do that, actually."

Harry's eyebrows rose and he chuckled. "I don't know why I'm surprised, actually. Hermione always manages to pull something like this out of her sleeve." He paused. "Wait, what happens when you're not touching the floor?"

Ron flushed about six different shades of red. "Well, when that happens we're usually… otherwise occupied and we're not coming to the phone anyway. The charm also doesn't work during dinner time in the kitchen or dining room. That's family time. If someone really needs to get something to us urgently, they'll just owl. Besides, you guys are all on our watches. If anything drastic happened, we'd be the first to know." Ron glanced down at his watch, a smaller version of his mother's clock. It had hands for himself, Harry, Hermione, his parents, his siblings, their children, and his daughter Rose. Instead of having all the hands on one face, he had a face for each of his siblings, which showed their family. On his "home face" he had his parents, Hermione, Harry, Ginny, and Rose. If one of his siblings changed status significantly, like entering moral peril, the watch would automatically switch faces and flash red. Everyone had a watch, compliments of George. Molly considered them the main reason for her sanity after the war. They kept the nightmares at bay, for more than Molly. After a week with the watches, Arthur looked significantly healthier.

"Well, you and everyone else who wears the watches. That is, to say, everyone." Harry chuckled again as Ron's face slowly faded back to normal.

"So Harry, why'd you call?"

"Did you know we're related?"

Ron opened his mouth in an exaggerated pantomime of having his mind blown. "It's not like you married my younger sister or anything," he said.

"No, I mean we're actually related."

"Wait, you married my sister and you were related beforehand? That's disgusting!" Ron supplied one of his trademark faces of disgust.

"Well it's not close…"

"How close." Ron's voice sounded dead.

"Not close for our kids to be weird or anything. All the pureblood families in our world are related anyway, remember? So anyway, my great great great great great aunt Potter married a Weasley. Six generations back isn't too bad, right? And she's not even my direct ancestor, though the Weasley is yours. You can look it up in your books actually. I assume your family has geneology books?" Ron nodded. "Well, you can find the marriage of Claudia Potter to Flavian Weasley somewhere in there. I was going through the old Potter books with Ginny when we found it. It'll definitely be in yours."

Ron relaxed, his shoulders rolling back to their natural place. "'S not that bad, then. I was worried you'd be as close as the Prewitts or something. Anyway, why bring it up?"

"Just thought it was cool, is all. Besides, I thought it might help explain the rather, er, interesting hair color of Rose."

Ron sighed. "I know. I think she might be the first Weasley born with jet black hair ever. I really don't know how the gene stayed hidden for so long, since black is a dominant allele."

Harry blinked. Even through the embers Ron could tell he was in shock. "And you know this how?"

"Always the tone of surprise," Ron replied in a mock-affronted tone. "But seriously, Hermione had Rose's DNA tested with a specialist when she went for her first well visit at the Muggle pediatrician."

Harry chuckled. "Hermione would. Why would you see a Muggle physician?"

"Well, we don't live in a wizarding area, and Hermione doesn't come from wizarding stock. That's not to say she isn't as good as any other witch or wizard by any means. As we all know, she's better than the lot of us. We were just worried that Rose might be susceptible to Muggle diseases and wizarding diseases as a id because of her connection to the Muggle world. After all, Muggleborns get their immunizations, so we're not sure if they can get sick or not."

Harry blinked a couple times. "Are you telling me you can't get chicken pox?"

"What's that?"

"These really itchy sores that you get all over. It comes with a wicked fever. You're sick for a week or something ridiculous, and the virus can come back whenever because it lives in your spinal cord."

"Ew. No, I can say with confidence that wizards do not get this chicken pox."

"Well, I don't know if it was from my mom or not but I can tell you that wizards can get Muggle diseases. I had the chicken pox when I was a kid. Some kid in my kindergarten class had it, and Dudley made me drink his apple juice after he coughed into it. He didn't show up to school the next day, and Dudley told me I'd be dead within a week. I never had my immunization shots. I take it you know what those are by now?"

"Yeah," Ron shuddered. "You Muggles are nuts. Honestly, putting medicine into someone with a needle? It's bloody barbaric!"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Anyway, Hermione explained this to me when I had James. She thinks that the diseases come from being around other kids with the disease only, no matter whether you're a wizard or a Muggle."

"So how come I didn't get this stuff?"

"You didn't hang out with the Muggle children much, did you? Especially not when they were sick, right?"

Ron's eyes lit up. "Oh yeah! My mom said they had germs that could kill…" Ron started to mumble, "little boys like me."

Harry laughed so hard he couldn't make a sound. Instead, tears streamed from his eyes and he clutched a stitch in his side. He only stopped when he heard a series of thumping sounds in his own house, followed by the waist length red hair he had come to love. "Ron, Ginny's here. Might as well go. Nice to check in… and give you yet another reason for you to know your kid's well… yours." Harry paused. "OW!"

Ron sniggered as Harry's head vanished from the fireplace. Ginny probably kicked Harry's sorry arse for that comment.

Hermione soon snaked her hands around his waist. "What did Harry want?"

"Apparently Rose's our kid. Who knew," Ron scoffed. "Oh, and we're also related."

"Well he's been married to your sister for how long now?"

"No, not that, though that's what I thought at first," said Ron, pleased that he and Hermione were once again on the same wavelength. "Apparently six generations ago a Potter married into the Weasley line."

"That's not horribly inbred though, for how small the community of witches and wizards is."

"Well thank Merlin you don't think we're a bunch of, what do the Americans say, hicks from the sticks? Apparently inbreeding is somewhat of a commonality in very rural portions of America."

"Ronald, that's a stereotype and you know it."

"A bloody hilarious stereotype, mind you."

"Language, Ron!" Hermione cuffed him lightly about the ear. "It actually does happen in some parts of every country though, Ron. There was this one family in Kentucky that bred themselves into having kids with blue skin."

"Blue like that film about the candy factory when that little girl had the piece of blueberry pie gum?"

"Yes, blue like her." Hermione said, recalling the Johnny Depp film they saw with Martha a few weeks previously. She figured out how to set up a projector using a bed sheet and a couple not entirely legal charms. The video rental store would later notice a 20 pound note on the front counter as payment for their "rental".

Ron made a face worthy of a fun house mirror. "That's revolting."

"Yes, well I suppose it does seem that way to us. Remember, these people lived in the hills where no one else was around. Suddenly your cousin starts to look pretty attractive."

"Can we not talk about this anym—" Ron broke off, his voice ending in a strangled gasp.

"What, Ron?"

Ron didn't answer. He simply stood still, his face slowly morphing into a mask of horror. "'Mione," he gasped. "Look down at your watch." His auror training with Harry had taught them both to watch their peripheries constantly, so much that it became second nature. As soon as his watch flashed red, Ron knew. He saw his daughter's hand slip slowly from Home to Mortal Peril. It moved past just for a second, and Ron's heart soared as he thought she might be asleep. It rebounded off Sleeping, landing in Mortal Peril with a resounding clunk that Ron was sure he could hear. Hermione's face matched his in an instant, her eyes returning to their shell-shocked appearance from the war against Voldemort.

"She was just playing," Hermione gasped. A moment later, the two tore through their sitting room, using counters in the pantry as launches off the back door in the kitchen. They sprinted to the backyard to find Rose, hair black as her godfather's and wild as her mother's, strewn about her face where she lay. Her eyes were open, able to see, but she made no sound or motion that she heard her parents. Her shoulders rose dramatically in time with each shallow breath, trying to grab more air from each moment, as if her lungs couldn't find oxygen in the air.

"Hermione!" Ron shouted, bending over Rose's face, "What the bloody hell is wrong with our kid?"

Hermione, a flurry of curls and frizz, flew inside and grabbed a yellow box from the top shelf of the kitchen medicine cabinet. "And they told me I was nuts for having this," she muttered to herself. Running back outside, she took a large syringe-like object out of the box, which she shoved at Ron. "Hold that." She unscrewed the cap of the object, stuck it to Rose's leg, and pressed a button on the top with her thumb. With a resounding click Rose's back arched in pain and slowly lowered. Her breathing returned to normal; color gradually filled her cheeks. She kept her eyes closed, concentrating on breathing in and out. Hermione bent down to feel her pulse: far faster than normal.

"Ron, we're taking her to the hospital now. A Muggle hospital. Don't even try to argue with me because wizards have no clue how to treat this."

Ron knelt down and cradled Rose in his arms like an infant, lifting her up and supporting her head. "It's okay, Rosie," Ron cooed, "Mama's going to make you all better."

"I'm apparating us. We both know you'll splinch all three of us with how stressed you are. Now, keep her head up and her chest open as best you can." Hermione's voice was all business in an attempt to push away the image of her daughter lying lifeless on the grass.

* * *

As Hermione turned on the spot, grasping Ron's arm as he held their daughter, Crookshanks slunk out of his hiding place behind the shrub. His fur still held the imprint of Rose's hand where she had pet him.


End file.
